30-Day Blog Challenge (Day 4)

A Picture of Something that Makes you Happy

You'll have to forgive me for writing out of sequence- I went out and got "slizzard in a blizzard" as my buddy J. said, and on top of that, the post about my parents will probably be hard to write and deserves more attention than my hangover can give.
So!

This picture, and every component therein is what makes me the most simply happy. There are things in my life (like last night's party, and having nights out with my ladies) that make me happy. They make me smile, laugh, but they have more components to that happiness than I'd like to admit.

This picture was taken in Sister Lakes, MI. Round Lake, to be specific. Our family friends have a cottage here that's been in their family since the later 1900's(!) and due to the closeness of our families (and two or three other families) we have come up here every single summer since I was born, give or take once or twice.

It is a place where I truly feel at peace: Our phones are nonfunctional due to lack of service, the only internet connection is from the neighbors and only really accessible after midnight, there is only one TV in the entire lake house and it is only very rarely used for video games or late night movies.

So what do we do? We spend most of the day outside- they have probably the nicest stretch of lakefront beach on the entire lake. We build sandcastles, feed the ducks, fish,  hunt for minnows and keep them as pets in the spare foot-washing bucket. There is an inflatable Rave trampoline out just deep enough that if you cannonball your feet don't touch the ground. We play our own personal invention, barnacles, we launch people off.
At night we play board games, solitaire, and every now and then just sit in the loft and listen to our parents get wasted and play poker.
We have donuts every morning from a local bakery, at least one dinner a week has corn from a farmers market that's so fresh we picked it off the truck and it's so sweet it almost feels like a sin to put salt and butter on it. We once deep-friend a turkey and they set the lawn on fire, and proceeded to run back up to the house for a bucket of water...on a lake house.
Then...then we have the boats. One belongs to the family that owns the cottage, and it's a pontoon boat that's max speed is about 1/2 the median speed for a normal one. (That's the one the kids get to drive)
Then there's our speedboat, which is my family's. And that boat is the one pulling me in that picture.

And so, the second thing that makes me happy in that picture? Water skiing.
I'm the only one in the entire group of children who has learned how to do it (so far. Mi. was getting good at it last time I saw him.) and I wish i could describe to you the way it feels.
It's like flying. All you think about is slipping over the water, pushing a foot down to slip like a fish out of the wake into the smoothest, glass water you've ever seen. You can't hear anyone, you can't depend on anyone but yourself, and it's...
I guess the only work I'm getting here is...Peace. Zen. Happiness.

Y'know.
Stuff like that.

Taloodles,
Manda